A knock at the door interrupted his volatile mix of frustration and guilt. Joe crossed the room in seconds— the condo, two bedrooms and a bath and a half on the second floor, shaded by a sycamore and overlooking the parking lot, was small—and yanked open the door to find himself staring at a wild-haired woman holding a child’s hand and a bunch of paper flowers on pipe cleaner stems.
“Oh,” the woman said, blushing. Her hair was silvery except for sunset stripes of pink and orange at the ends that curled around her neck, truly the most unusual color job Joe had ever seen. Her eyes were a startling shade of green, and her curvaceous figure was only partially obscured by an old sweatshirt, which was spattered with glitter and paint. The child was a skinny, tough-looking little girl with a pixie cut and red corduroy overalls and scabs on her elbows, who stood there grinning up at him as though she’d won a bet. “Is, um, Shamim here?”
“I’m afraid my mother has gone to do some errands.”
The little girl suddenly slipped out of her mother’s grip and feinted past Joe’s legs and into the apartment. “Haroon! Haroon!” she called at the top of her lungs.
“Jo-Jo! Get back here!” The woman’s blush deepened even further, and she rolled her eyes at Joe. “I’m so sorry. She’s taken a real shine to… is Haroon your father?”
“Uh… yes.” Joe automatically stepped aside to let the woman enter, his ingrained courtesy overcoming his better instincts. This visit was only going to delay his departure further. Maybe he could get Mrs. Nazar, his mother’s friend from the third floor, to come down, only he wasn’t sure which apartment she lived in and he didn’t have her phone number.
“I’m Holly Herron,” the woman said. Preoccupied with the immediate challenge of getting back to Montair, Joe had failed to curb his gaze, and he had to jerk his attention away back to the woman’s face. He’d been admiring her hips, which were round and generous in a stretchy black skirt of the sort some women wore to the gym. Her legs were pale and nicely shaped, and she was wearing little, short socks that barely showed above her sneakers. They had a rainbow stripe along the top. “I’m a friend of your parents. This is my daughter. We live down the hall, and, well, Josephine made your dad some flowers.”
“They’re roses!”
Josephine apparently shouted everything she had to say. Curiously, Joe didn’t mind. He loved his niece and nephew, but the effort of cajoling Madiha and Taj to allow him into their world—a place of elaborate make-believe with ever-changing rules—exhausted him. He’d come to accept he just wasn’t cut out for kids—but the wiry girl who snatched the homely bundle out of her mother’s hand intrigued him.
She held out the bouquet, a bright, but lumpy, paper-and-paint affair decorated with the same glitter that was on her mother’s shirt. Joe dutifully admired them, touching a petal that was stiff with paste.
“I’m Joe.” He held out his hand to Holly, and she took it in hers and squeezed, once. Her skin was cool and soft.
“I know.” Her smile made her eyes crinkle, an effect that somehow made her look even prettier. “Your mother talks about you all the time.”
“I’m Jo!” the little girl shrieked, jumping up and down. She ran across the room and squirmed up into the wheelchair with Haroon, who smiled and spoke some of his nonsense syllables. There was more life in his eyes now than Joe had seen in weeks. “I’m Jo and you’re Joe.”
“Uh, I guess that’s right,” Joe said. He turned his attention back to Holly. “I’m afraid—well, I’ve just been called in. My mother’s not answering her phone and—”
“Oh, we’ll be happy to stay until she gets back,” Holly said without hesitation. “I know all about what you do. I’ve stayed with him before. Go ahead, really.”
What you do—Joe grimaced, wondering what version his mother had shared. Her disappointment that he hadn’t finished his engineering degree at Berkeley had tainted her attitude toward everything Joe had done since.
Though it hardly mattered. Holly Herron, neighbor of his parents, had made an offer he couldn’t refuse. He supposed she was likely to be at least as handy in case of emergency as he himself, which was to say, not very; all of Joe’s professional skill and competence somehow evaporated when he returned to his childhood home.
“I hate to ask you to give up time on your day off—”
“I have tomorrow off. I just came off nine days on.”
“Nine days? That’s rough,” Joe said, though he often worked longer stretches himself. “What kind of work do you do?”
“I’m a 911 dispatcher. A couple of my coworkers were out sick—just one of those things. I don’t mind.”
Joe raised his eyebrows. He had kept in touch with a few of the guys on the Fremont force since the investigation into his father’s beating. They would know all of the dispatchers. He could ask… what? What exactly would he ask a fellow cop about this intriguing neighbor of his parents? Joe pushed the thought away.
“Wow, I don’t know what to say, that would be really—”
“Just say thanks,” Holly said, giving him a sunny grin as she reached for the spoon and bowl he’d abandoned on the table.
~*~
It wasn’t until Joe had his earpiece in, headed north on 680 an even ten miles over the speed limit, that he realized he’d left his phone on his mother’s kitchen table.
He smacked the steering wheel in frustration. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it meant he’d have to make the trip back to Fremont when he was finished at the station. Another fifty-mile round trip. It was the confusion over his father, Joe assured himself, even as he thought again of Holly’s crazy hair, the smudge of golden glitter on her neck.
The sun was dipping low in the sky when he arrived at the Montair station. He parked hurriedly and met Trina in the hall.
“Is the girl holding up?”
“Yeah. Her dad’s about to shit a brick, though.”
Joe nodded. He had little sympathy for the man. “And the Singh kid?”
“Room two. Want me to come with you?”
“I think I’ll do this one myself, if you don’t mind.”
“Man to man.” Trina’s tone was mocking, but she was grinning. Joe gave her a tired smile in return. Maybe he should have just asked Trina to Paulette’s wedding, but it was hard to imagine her in a dress.
Robby Singh looked like he’d lost fifteen pounds since the morning. He jumped when Joe opened the door and then didn’t seem to know where to put his hands. He ended up folding them on the table in front of him.
Joe considered him, frowning. The boy had the wiry build of a runner; Joe wouldn’t have been surprised if he was tough. He’d have to be, to survive the sort of hazing he’d evidently been going through. The weaker pledges simply quit, and Joe suspected, from the rumors he’d heard all those years ago, that the most savage treatment was reserved for those who refused to back down. The last men standing.
Joe wondered if Robby was such a kid and searched his smooth, handsome face for clues to his character. Sometimes, the quiet ones had surprising reserves of strength.
“I just had a couple questions about those bruises,” Joe said, after he got the procedural stuff squared away.
The boy’s hand jerked to his neck, then away, but he said nothing.
“I was at UCSB back when Sigma Mu was suspended,” Joe said mildly. “You hear about that?”
Robby nodded faintly.
“There was this rumor going around, that they’d take the pledges and cuff one hand to this pipe that ran along the ceiling down in the basement. Then they’d… well, they’d give them a choice.”
Joe watched the boy carefully. Robby’s mouth twitched and Joe could tell he was fighting not to break eye contact.
“They had to take off their pants,” Joe continued. “With one hand. And then, the choice was which cheek they’d get branded on. Some people said the brand was Sigma Mu, the Greek letters, and some people said it was just an X. But, you know, white-hot metal on your ass, I don
’t know if it much matters.”
Robby licked his lips. “They don’t—” He stopped when his voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “They don’t do that.”
Joe inclined his head. “You know, I can get someone in here to look at that wrist, they’ll be able to tell me exactly what caused those abrasions.” An enormous stretch of the truth. “But I guess we both already know. How about you tell me how you got the ones on your neck?”
“It was…” It took Robby a couple more tries before he got it out. “It’s not really a big deal. Just a human pyramid thing. You have to hold it for fifteen minutes. I was on the bottom.”
“What about Terrence Nestor? Was he there, when you were doing the pyramid?”
“He’s always there, man,” Robby said, without hesitation this time. “He’s pledge captain.”
“Is he the one who comes up with these ideas? Is he in charge of making sure everyone, uh, participates?”
Robby nodded. “Most of the time, anyway.”
“Anyone ever try to stop him?”
“You can’t stop him,” Robby said. “Pledges aren’t allowed to talk. Not in the basement.”
“Not pledges. The others. Upperclassmen.”
Robby finally looked away, and swiped at his eyes with his sleeve. “Once or twice,” he whispered.
“But he didn’t listen.”
This time, Robby said nothing, and Joe gave him a minute to collect himself. He could picture it, though—he’d been the victim of bullying himself before he got his growth, before he started taking martial arts classes after school. No one would have stood up to Tank, not the frightened freshmen desperate to save face, not the other “brothers.”
“What else?” Joe asked, after Robby had himself back under control.
It took a while, but before an hour had passed, Robby had explained about the pushups and the wall sits, about being forced to wear women’s underwear while one of the pledge trainers sprayed them with a hose connected to the utility sink next to the washer and dryer. About the Sharpie pen Tank used when a pledge refused to swallow pills: first he wrote obscenities on the boy’s buttocks. Then he violated him with it in other ways.
~*~
The decision was made to take Gia to Monte Vista Regional for a psych evaluation. After Odell left to escort the girl to the hospital, Roger Hanover made a couple of loud and demanding calls that resulted in his assurance that his attorneys—plural, Joe noted with distaste—were en route.
Now seemed as good a time as any to talk to the man, if for no other reason than sweating Hanover in an interview room seemed preferable to letting him continue to harass everyone in earshot.
“You have your daughter call you by your first name?” Joe asked.
Hanover shrugged, looked over Joe’s shoulder, out the window, anywhere, it seemed, to avoid looking him in the eye.
“Before her mother became a Vicodin whore, she made it a full-time job to keep me from seeing Gia. When we did get together, you know, she was growing up. I liked to treat her like an adult.”
“First name basis—that’s treating her like an adult?”
Hanover’s gaze flicked briefly to Joe and then away. Joe figured him for mid-fifties, with an expensive if not naturally attractive presence. He had the build of a frequent flier at the gym; hair a bit too long and coated with shiny product, glasses a little too hip for a guy that age.
“Look, my wife and I didn’t have a perfect marriage, and the divorce has been tough on all of us, but Gia has had everything she could want. I’m not proud of losing touch with her, but I travel three weeks out of the month, and that’s what’s paying for her schooling and her mother’s rehab and every other damn thing.”
“You seeing someone else?”
Hanover’s face flushed angry red, and Joe knew he’d scored a direct hit. “There’s a woman in my life, yes.”
“See a lot of her?”
“What the hell business is that of yours?”
Joe wasn’t sure of the answer to that question; it had been an intuitive query, an attempt to find the source of Gia’s obvious fragility.
“I just meant that it must be tough to fit it all in. A demanding job like yours, a new relationship… a daughter.”
“Gia’s eighteen. It’s not like she’s a child anymore.”
Joe wasn’t sure he agreed.
~*~
Joe made good time on his way back to his parents’ place, where a surprise waited. Josephine Herron opened the door when he knocked.
“Hi, Joe!”
“His name is Mr. Bashir,” her mother’s voice called from another room.
“Mr. Bashir,” the little girl echoed, seizing his hand. “Want to see what I made?”
She tugged him toward the kitchen, where Holly and his mother were setting the table with the good placemats and napkins. His father’s wheelchair had been moved to his old place at the head of the table so he could watch the goings on, and he occasionally smacked his hand against his thigh, grunting enthusiastically.
“Look!” Josephine handed Joe what looked like free-form origami made out of the Sunday comics. “A rose!”
“Very nice,” Joe said, accepting it with care and setting it on top of the bowl of fruit his mother kept on the counter. “Very, uh, realistic.”
Holly had changed clothes. She was wearing a soft green sweater, the neckline of which cascaded prettily from her collarbones to the top of her breasts. Modest—but only barely so. And snug jeans that had been softened by many trips through the washer. She’d made up her eyes, and they looked even greener, if such a thing was possible.
“Joe. Light the candles, dinner’s almost ready,” his mother admonished. As though candles were a regular feature of dinner at her table.
Joe tried to keep his face neutral. His family had been trying to set him up for years, and he had resented every attempt. His own tastes tended toward tightly wound, ambitious women from Berkeley. His last two girlfriends had been an architect and an intellectual property attorney: both ran marathons and both drove hybrids. Sometimes, he wondered if they were basically the same person—and if it was only a matter of time before he saddled himself with yet another aggressively attractive yet emotionally distant woman who he would, over the course of a six-month relationship, talk to less and less and fuck with diminished enthusiasm until their official breakup was practically an afterthought.
Minimal involvement meant easy breakups, which was the way Joe liked it. He kept his colleagues at arms’ length, his friends on a limited rotation. If he could have distanced himself from his family too, he would have done so years ago.
But his current case, the return to the scene of his miserable college years, those unmoored and unhappy kids—all of it had left him unsettled. He was surprised at how relieved he was to find himself at this familiar table, sitting down to a meal his mother had prepared. Unlike Gia, Joe had always known he was cherished. He’d spent so many years feeling as though he didn’t fit into his parents’ world, and now he saw that their world had expanded and reformed around him, that there had always been a place for him.
“I want to do the candles!” Josephine yelled, climbing up onto a chair and putting her elbows on the table, reaching for the brass candlesticks.
“Jo-jo, no!” Holly scolded, grabbing her daughter by the arms and forcibly lifting her down to the floor. But even her scolding was laced with affection; she seemed to possess no hard edges at all. “I’m sorry. She’s sort of headstrong.”
“It’s—it’s nothing,” Joe said. He put his hands on the back of the chair where Omar usually sat and pulled it out for Holly.
“Oh—but I was helping get dinner ready.”
“I’ll do it,” Joe said. “Josephine, what do you say, you and me. We’ll be a team.”
His mother beamed. Holly blushed. His father looked on, inscrutably.
~*~
After dinner and coffee, he walked Holly down the hall to her apartment, carrying Jo
sephine, who had fallen asleep.
“I’m sorry about that,” Joe said. “My mom…”
All through the meal, she’d chattered on about Joe: a recent interview on KTVU, a commendation he’d received over a year ago, the cabinets he’d hung in his parents’ laundry room. “He just taught himself how to do it,” his mother said, wonderingly, after which Joe had muttered, “YouTube,” softly enough that only Holly could hear, which made her smile.
“It’s nice,” Holly said. “How proud she is of you.”
She unlocked her door, and Joe gently pried Josephine’s arms from around his neck. This, at least, he had plenty of experience with; Mediha still sometimes fell asleep in his arms.
Holly took her daughter and hitched her up against her chest, the little girl mumbling in her sleep.
“Joe…” Holly said, just as he was about to say good night. “I, um, was there. The night your father… I didn’t take the call, but I heard the whole thing. I’m so sorry. So sorry. I’ve never forgotten. None of us have. And when I moved into the building and found out they lived here, well. I just…”
But she seemed to have run out of words. Was she apologizing? Explaining? Joe wished Holly would look at him, but she pressed her face against her daughter’s downy hair and closed her eyes.
“Thank you,” he said softly, not knowing what exactly he was thanking her for. He stood there for a moment after she entered her apartment and the door closed behind her, thinking about things he rarely allowed himself to remember, about possibilities he never allowed himself to consider.
~*~
Guns and Roses Page 35
